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Science of Chess (kinda?): Viih_Sou's 2. Ra3?? and a modest research proposal

With all due respect, I think you completely whooshed on the whole point of 2. Ra3. I Ctrl+F'd your article and the word 'blitz' isn't present, which is the main idea here.

At faster and faster time controls, the unsound becomes sound. Countless examples of "punishing" bullet fianchetto with Bh6?? or ...Bh3?? are present, and I even see stories of Qc2->Qxh7 stuff, hoping for premoves missing the point.

Ra3 exchange offer is a slightly stronger gambit, though in some ways "as bad as" the Stafford gambit gimmicky garbage (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5 Nc6?! 4.Nxc6 dxc6).

What we have here is a talented player offering a silly handicap, in particular at fast time control only, certainly no increment, and purposely on 3 0, which they're accustomed to. So it's an opening for *blitz* , just another mind game for fast time controls only.
@icytease said in #3:
> With all due respect, I think you completely whooshed on the whole point of 2. Ra3. I Ctrl+F'd your article and the word 'blitz' isn't present, which is the main idea here.
>
> At faster and faster time controls, the unsound becomes sound. Countless examples of "punishing" bullet fianchetto with Bh6?? or ...Bh3?? are present, and I even see stories of Qc2->Qxh7 stuff, hoping for premoves missing the point.
>
> Ra3 exchange offer is a slightly stronger gambit, though in some ways "as bad as" the Stafford gambit gimmicky garbage (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5 Nc6?! 4.Nxc6 dxc6).
>
> What we have here is a talented player offering a silly handicap, in particular at fast time control only, certainly no increment, and purposely on 3 0, which they're accustomed to. So it's an opening for *blitz* , just another mind game for fast time controls only.

I'd argue that it's still interesting! Sure, the impact of a pet line will be magnified by blitz and bullet, but you could still try and measure this kind of threshold at any time control you like. Even if it turned out that there was only an effect at 3+0 or something, I wouldn't be as quick as you to dismiss this as "just another mind game." YMMV, though, and I went ahead and put the word "blitz" in there for you. :)
Great article, as always! However, I think there’s too vast a difference in chess understanding between us and top-level GMs, and I’m therefore not sure if such an experiment would yield anything relevant. Furthermore, Jacobson claims to be quite well-versed in Ra3?! theory, thanks to his fellow GM Andrew Hong, which participants wouldn’t be aware of - after all, Jacobson’s pet line is a little more detailed than simply sacrificing the exchange. Otherwise, “very interesting!”
> instead I was trying to commit chess moves to memory so I could...what?....reproduce them during a game better than another kid?

I do like the reasoning there. It seems obvious that it might not be interesting chess at all. That the win technology had taken over the essence of chess appeal. I mean that it might be an equal information proposition, from which to measure each other abilities of foresight of its mechanics all the way to a mate for one side or other, or draw trying (death to some, to me, equally revealing of the board hidden charades and long-term promises of having always more of them, in my lifetime). That does not mean one can't get skills, but not at the price of killing the fun of discovering the board. Going spoiler force feeeding and crowding the mind to the point, getting distracted by the board information, might lead one astray in excuting with good time management gains that spolier knowledge.

There are other sentences of yours, that are aking of some of my going away from chess and coming back, although I already knew of that trap of knowledge imitation dominating chess club and tournament strategy at lower decks, as a rite of entry toward more general chess.. Once people get over that crutch, and are forced to actually look at the mysteries of the board. and find that there might be something else than long lines that the other might not know or remember is better than another, by which move was played after which other.

caricature. so I never really went educated, but i did have enough long streches of pure non-clock chess with better players than me... losing was not really a problem.. I had some fun before realizing I was losing.. most of the time... lol.. so.. As the other guy was saying while falling from some tall building upper levels, "Jusqu'ici, tout va bien", during which time I was actually having some mental stories gong on about the board under my eye goings.. until the board, and opponent told me otherwise, but you did not look at this my friend, for that was the ambience of all my games.
I like the idea, (in general the attempt to drag the other player in uncharted territory for him) and, in my very low level, I try to do it playing very often as black the Alekine defense or the Old Benoni which very often surprise my opponent.
Also, as a scientist myself, I think that the initial research question is well put and I would be interested in exploring it.

Where I argue is that the engine can replace the human to perform the experiment (even to provide a benchmark) as I think you are suggesting.
AFAIK, but I am not an expert of chess engines, the chess engine depth is only the computational power in analysing the position tree (how deep they go). So somehow all the openings at a given level (let's take a fictional value of 3 levels depth in the tree) are analysed the same (barred some optimisations to look deeper at the most popular or promising).
What you are talking about (translating in Computer Science) is comparing two players where one knows well the portion of the position tree (let's say level 5 depth) and the other doesn't (let's say level 1 depth), which is likely because a human player would know deeper small portion (as width) of the tree. In this scenario, you cannot replace the human with the engine, unless you (re)-program one to better mimic the human behaviour.

Don't know how many other players would be interested in your experiment, but I certainly would.

Happy to talk more.
Inmediately after the read i played vs stockfish 4 and lost with black. I mean thats mean
I tried this system in casual bullet against 2700-2800 rated players as an experiment. Kept getting owned.